Leo Strauss is often associated with the University of Chicago, where he taught political philosophy from 1949 through the late 1960s. But this prodigious emigre scholar taught at the New School between 1938 and 1948 while writing “On Tyranny” and “Persecution and the Art of Writing.” Those years in New York were among topics explored at a New School conference called “New Perspectives on Leo Strauss from America and Europe.” Liberal studies chairman James Miller said: “It’s as if he wasn’t here for a decade. I think this is an important occasion for setting the record straight.”

The conference was organized by New School graduate students Angel Jaramillo, Rodrigo Chacon, and Jorge Romero. All three were educated in Mexico.

Strauss employed a close reading of philosophical texts; discovered “esoteric” interpretations that authors did not espouse openly; and held that universal truths transcend the times in which they are written. “Although he bequeathed no formal system or doctrine, he did leave a very characteristic way of posing problems,” Yale political scientist Steven Smith said.

Several speakers discussed various attacks on Strauss and his students, and during the conference, two people were ejected, the first a Lyndon LaRouche supporter who denounced Strauss and set up books titled “Children of Satan” outside the conference room. The next day, New School philosophy chair J.M. Bernstein physically escorted out a heckler.

“On the face of it,” Mr. Smith said, “the emergence of Straussianism is no different from the development of any other philosophical school that grows up around powerful and influential teachers. There are Rawlsians, Habermasians, Arendtians, and so on. To be sure, all of these thinkers have their friends and detractors, but their names do not call forth an intense, almost visceral response from critics. You can take them or leave them. This is not the case with Strauss.” In asking what makes Straussianism so different, Mr. Smith said one reason was perhaps because Straussians have sought to influence policy.

George Mason University School of Law professor Peter Berkowitz discussed attacks on Strauss by Miles Burnyeat, Shadia Drury, Stephen Holmes, and Anne Norton. The last author, he said, broke new ground in a genre that could be called “tabloid scholarship.” Mr. Berkowitz recalled an amusing anecdote about encountering Mr. Burnyeat at an afternoon tea in Cambridge, Mass. Mr. Burnyeat asked, “Are you a Straussian?” and Mr. Berkowitz replied, “It depends on what you mean by a Straussian.” The audience laughed when Mr. Berkowitz said, “Of course, when asked whether you have leprosy, only a leper would ask in return, ‘What do you mean by leprosy?'”

William Kristol found a golden lining in the recent criticism of Strauss: It compelled people to reread Strauss. Mr. Kristol found it ironic that Strauss, attacked in his lifetime as anti-democratic, was now attacked as a democratic imperialist; that he wrote very little about America and is now portrayed as a defender of American exceptionalism; and where he was once criticized as a difficult thinker, and even an intentional obscurantist, he was now accused of having had a clear political agenda.

Mr. Miller said that Strauss would have to be considered a great teacher, given the quality of his students and the fact that he did not produce clones who all agreed with one another on philosophy and politics.

Werner Dannhauser recalled how once at a lecture by Strauss on Thucydides, audience member Sidney Morgenbesser sought to refute Strauss by invoking British empiricist David Hume. Strauss, Mr. Dannhauser recalled, answered gently and said by coincidence he had been reading Hume’s “Treatise on Human Nature” the previous night on the train. “I thought,” Mr. Dannhauser said, “What kind of man reads Hume overnight on a train trip?”

Among other talks, Catholic University professor Richard Velkley discussed how Strauss, generally considered a political thinker, was engaged in deep metaphysical issues.

Strauss’s daughter, Jenny Strauss Clay, concluded the conference with brief remarks. The audience laughed when she admitted that she was not a Straussian, only a Strauss. She said her father would have been especially pleased that three graduate students had organized the conference.

gshapiro@nysun.com